Black Mesa (PC)

Today I'm looking at Black Mesa, formally known as 'Black Mesa: Source', a free fan-made remake of the legendary first person shooter Half-Life (made with Valve's blessing!)

Yeah it's only been a couple of months since mecha-neko played the original game but whatever, I'm playing this anyway. Half-Life's one of my favourite games, and I want to see what happened when these fans got hold of it and decided to 'improve it'.

Click the pictures to view in extreme 1280x800 resolution. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should buy a new monitor.

Shock Troopers (Arcade)

This one's another game request, and apparently it's an overhead run and gun a bit like Mercs, which I played early last year on the Megadrive/Genesis and didn't much like.

Looking back though, it's hard to tell what exactly I didn't like about the game. Mostly because I barely wrote anything about it. Okay it was a mindless shoot 'em up so I probably didn't have much to work with, but I'm sure I could have come up with something a bit more insightful than "Sup guys, I'm in a truck now! Truck beats goons. Oh damn. Tank beats truck." Guess I'm adding that one to the list of games I'm going to have to replay some day.

But anyway, here's Shock Troopers. It's a mindless shoot 'em up!

XCOM: Enemy Unknown (Demo) (PC)

Today I'm having a go at the demo of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the remake of classic 1994 turn based tactics game UFO: Enemy Unknown/X-COM: UFO Defense. I guess they took the bits they liked most from each title and combined them.

This is the tactical XCOM game by Firaxis by the way, not the first person shooter one by the Bioshock 2 developers. I don't know why publishers keep getting the idea that what classic strategy game fans would really like to play is a fast paced shoot 'em up. Fortunately this time there's a game for everyone.

Click the pics for a slightly better resolution.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)

I remember playing this one before a few years back, though nothing much about what I actually did in it. But it was requested so I'm playing it again. It seemed like a good time for it anyway, seeing as it's the game's 20th anniversary today... in Europe.

This was originally called 'Triforce of the Gods' in Japan, but it was changed for the English release because Nintendo of America were getting rid of references to religion at the time. Also it was an excuse to stick Link's name in the title again. Zelda always gets all the fame, and she's barely even in the games.

The Terminator (MS-DOS) - Guest Post

Here's a pickle. Ray's gone to all that trouble playing those Judge Dredd games and I've already played the only Judge Dredd FPS, Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death, back in January!

Never fear, I've had a look around and I've found something completely unrelated to play instead!

Prepare yourself for a shock. Some might say a Future Shock...

Judge Dredd (PSX)

Adventures in Judge Dredd Games - Part 4

Whoa, I thought his pistol in the earlier Judge Dredd games looked a bit wimpy, but now they've gone full speed in the other direction. That thing really looks like it could fire half a dozen different kinds of bullets. At once.

By 1997 the Judge Dredd franchise had left the 16-bit era behind for a new start on the PlayStation. Of course they couldn't call this 'Judge Dredd 2', because that might make their new audience feel like they were missing out on a game. But they couldn't be bothered to come up with a subtitle either, so yeah this is the fifth game in the franchise with the same name. In a row.

Judge Dredd (SNES)

Adventures in Judge Dredd Games - Part 3

Today I'm playing... Judge Dredd, aka Judge Dredd - The Movie as it's allegedly based in some way on the 1995 Stallone film, and even has him on the cover.

By 1995 there had been already been two Judge Dredd games released, Judge Dredd and, uh, Judge Dredd, both of them only on computers and neither of them much fun. But now it's the consoles' turn to show off what they can do with the licence. This one came out on the Genesis/Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, and DOS, and I'm playing the SNES game. Will it succeed where the other games failed, or will it be as bad as the movie?

Well they've already tripped at the first hurdle by calling it Judge Dredd again.